Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Dugin Says Putin Being Undermined by Insiders Who Don’t Back Him All the Way

Paul
Goble

Staunton, April 29 – Aleksandr
Dugin, the influential leader of the Eurasian Movement, says that Vladimir
Putin is not just being attacked by “a fifth column” of opposition figures but
also is being undermined by what he calls “a sixth column” consisting of those
within his regime who are actively working to undermine the Kremlin leader.

In today’s “Vzglyad,” Dugin notes
that the term “fifth column” is widely and appropriately used in Russia to
designate those who are openly opposed to Putin not so much on traditional
ideological grounds than on civilizational ones and who look to the West as a
model (vz.ru/opinions/2014/4/29/684247.html).

According to the Eurasian leader and
frequent Kremlin advisor, one cannot describe this confrontation “in
ideological terms” because both Russia and the West are democratic societies
with capitalist market economies, a liberal ideology, and are secular.Dugin says that it isn’t even a battle
between eastern and western Christianity

Instead, he says, what is going on
is a civilizational struggle reflecting the tendency of geopolitics “to
regionalize space and society,” to divide the world between what he calls “the
civilization of the Sea” (the West) with its liberal values and “the
civilization of the Land” or World Island (Russia and adjacent territories, “an
Empire of conservative values.”

Sometimes this conflict runs along
national borders and sometimes, as in the case of Ukraine, it cuts across
them.But Dugin says he wants to focus
on the ways in which the civilization of the West is using some in Russia to
undermine its civilizational basis and thus advance the power of the West.

The fifth column helped destroy the
land empire that was the USSR and promote the rise of Boris Yeltsin in the
1990s.At that time, the Eurasianist
says, it wasn’t entirely proper to talk about a fifth column in Russia because
under Yeltsin, those who were and are part of a fifth column were inside the
regime itself and directing its development.

The turning point came in 2000 with
the coming to power of Vladimir Putin, Dugin says. His conservative and
nationalist approach led to the ouster of those in the Yeltsin regime who are
now the open opponents of the Kremlin and thus can be defined as a fifth column
in the classical sense.

But in fact, what Putin has done
allowed the development of a fifth column of a double kind: an open, “explicit”
fifth column of the most radical anti-Putin pro-Western opposition, and “a
hidden (implicit) fifth column in the form of those oligarchs, politicians [and
others] who while being no less radical Atlanticists than the anti-Putin
radicals, remained within the political regime” and sought “a compromise” with
Putin.

The firstare obvious, and the Russian state is fighting
against them, but the second are more hidden and not even properly named.Consequently, Dugin says, he believes there
is a need to introduce into the Russian political lexicon a new term: “the
sixth column,” to designate those within the regime who are weakening it by not
supporting Putin fully.

The fifth and sixth columns have the
same principles, but they manifest these in different ways. Unlike the fifth,
Dugin says, “the sixth column does not consist of the enemies of Putin but of
his supporters.If they are traitors,
then this is not at the level of a country but at that of a civilization.They do not attack Putin” at every step;
instead, “they hold him back.”

Because of that, fighting the sixth
column is more difficult, but it is absolutely necessary, Dugin says, because “contemporary
Russia is ‘Russian’ only in an extremely relative sense.” Instead, it remains “under
the power of the West in a much deeper sense than that of direct external rule
as was openly the case in the 1990s.”

According to Dugin, “the West is
inside of [Russians] in all senses, including consciousness, analysis,
relations, meanings and values. Present-day civilization is still not
completely Russia; it is not a Russian world; it is only something that can
become a Russian world,” but only if the sixth column is defeated along with the
fifth.

The Eurasianist writer says that the
sixth column “is sabotaging” Putin all the time, and “if Putin does not find in
himself the courage to give battle to the sixth column, his historic mission
will turn out to be fragile ... and even ephemeral.” In short, today, this “sixth
column is the main existential enemy of Russia.”

And to reinforce his point, Dugin
argues that “Ukraine became the victim not simply of a fifth column consisting
of those in the EuroMaidan but also of a sixth column inside the administration
of Yanukovich and the Part of the Regions. Washington strategists,” he says, “are
preparing something analogous for Russia.”

But in what will recall for many
some of the words of those who called for expanding the purges in Stalinist
times by attacking not just the openly disloyal but instead focusing and
attacking those who appeared most loyal, Dugin says that in Russia under Putin,
“he who is forewarned is forearmed.”